


The Light of Finished Stars

by reine_des_corbeaux



Series: Returning Season [1]
Category: 14th Century CE RPF, Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error - Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Heresy, Memory, Period Typical Attitudes, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21933487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/pseuds/reine_des_corbeaux
Summary: Béatrice de Planissoles ponders what it means to be good.
Relationships: Béatrice de Planissoles/Barthélemy Aurilhac, Béatrice de Planissoles/Pierre Clergue
Series: Returning Season [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592494
Comments: 12
Kudos: 10
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Light of Finished Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lurknomoar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurknomoar/gifts).



> I didn't tag this because it is very, very brief, but there is a very vague reference to Béatrice's rape by Pathau Clergue in here. Nothing explicit, and it's about two sentences total, but just thought I'd toss in a warning.

She’s been old now for more years than she was ever young, but she’s had little time to reflect. Life is busy in the hill country, no matter where you live, no matter your station. Not that there’s no time for leisure, but even in idleness, Béatrice de Planissoles has never quite trusted herself to be alone with her thoughts. That way lies the madness of remembrance and regret. 

But it’s a winter’s night, the house quiet and the servants asleep, and the fire crouches low in the hearth like a lurking demon, casting its long, odd shadows across the floor and walls of the little room. Béatrice stirs the embers with a poker, and thinks on hellfire, then on Barthélemy, sleeping in the bed behind her. He’s sweet, she supposes. Too young, too dull, but sweet. A comfort in her old age, gentle in bed and easily taught. And there’s something refreshing in his innocence or gullibility. Perhaps it’s that she can’t tell which it is, the innocence or the ignorance. The fire hisses and spits. An owl hoots in the long, dark night. The days have not yet turned back towards the sun, and the gloom hangs long and low in corners even at midday. Now, at midnight, even the dying fire cannot hold it back. And the thoughts come heavy then, the calm reflections undertaken a moment or so before sleep. 

She is, she thinks, a good woman, or at least she tries to be. But what is good, in the hill country? What is good, in never-forgotten Montaillou? The goodmen? It cannot be the men of the Church, men like her lover now, sleeping like a baby in the midden of his carnality. But is “good”, that nebulous, indecipherable concept, a word with room in it for Béatrice? 

She has been a bad woman in two faiths, but good in only one. The faith of her childhood that brought her comfort, the faith she has rejected, in that she was good. This Catholic newness rubs her wrong, for sins are not equal, and all will not be forgiven in the end. 

What would Pierre say if he saw her now, stripped of all the eager credence of her younger days, blinking in the newness of a world where she must survive as she can, as a widow, as a grandmother, as a lady? She can imagine the kindness and the cruelty, how he’d call her his dove and push her aside for what she now believes. 

“Rich words from a priest,” she mutters under her breath, but her lover doesn’t stir. 

Béatrice stirs the fire again, and the coals spit and hiss. Outside, the owl makes its call again, long and yearning and high. It’s a devil-bird, she knows, here for the soul of someone damned. But though she’s old, she cannot feel the death-call in her bones. There are still things that wait for her in this life, things she has not yet done. 

When she dies, whether that is in a year or two or ten, whether her oldness stretches past even the span of years that God gave Na Roqua, she will beg and plead to see a goodman. Her roots stretch deep beneath the soil, down a century of hidden worship. There are names in her bloodline, names of places she has never seen and never will see: Carcassonne. Béziers. Montségur. Living, dying places, lost on tongues and shrined in memory. The song of heresy lodges in her blood and blots out all present sympathies. 

She glances back into the deepened shadows, to the sleeping form of her lover where he lies. Young, she’s sure he’d look, if she glanced back at him. Young enough to be her son. Thoroughly inappropriate in all respects for a widow and for an old woman. But Béatrice remembers what Pierre Clergue would say, long ago: all carnal sins are equal. We are all living in error until the moment of the _consolamentum_. So, lie with me, darling. It’s no worse than when you lie with your husband. No worse than when you lay with Pathau. 

But sinning with Pierre was better than sinning with Bérenger, and better by far than Pathau’s violence, when Pierre touched her and when she knew that the heresy warmed her as much as the lust did, maybe more. Once on a winter night, she’d held him close for warmth, her younger limbs entwining his, her younger mind afire with words and prayer. 

People have always thought her stupid in the way they look down their noses at interlopers and nobles, but Béatrice does not think she has ever been stupid. Untutored, true, and ignorant of God, of Saints, of Latin and her letters, with a bad voice for song, but never stupid. She’d have learned all she could, given the chance, and she took the chance that Pierre Clergue gave her. 

But on that winter night she’d asked him questions, when they were both sated with sex and warmth, and she could think of herself as Béatrice the woman, not Béatrice the lady, or Béatrice the bastard’s concubine or Béatrice the priest’s whore. All those were veils, and only with Pierre could she throw them off. 

“What happens to souls when we die?” she’d asked. 

He’d tapped her playfully on the nose. 

“You know that. Into new bodies, over and over. An endless cycle. But the worst sinners become animals.” 

She’d frowned in the candlelight and burrowed deeper under the blankets. 

“And we’re sinning, so what of us? Do we come back as toads and owls?” 

Pierre laughed, hearty and full-throated. 

“No, dove, no. All sins of the flesh are one sin. And there is only one penitence, to be taken in the hours before death. We’ll rise, my love, and love again ‘til Judgement Day, in different forms.” 

“And if we die for heresy, at the stake?” 

“Then we rise again as light and go to new bodies. Good, credent bodies like before.” 

He’d grown weary then, or she’d gone sleepy from the heat and safety, from the forgiving words, but whatever the reason, Béatrice had not pressed him further, and they’d sunk together into restfulness. 

And now, hasn’t what she’s done become a different kind of resurrection? She’s killed the believer for another belief, where all sins are not, in fact, the same, and she will be counted wicked for adultery, for fornication with a priest, for violation of her holy marriage vows. But is it truly sin if you do not truly believe, and if you follow a different way? The questions drive her mad and tear her apart when she has the time to think, so she lurks instead in half-formed dreams of might-have beens. 

Would things have been different if she did not stay her course and if her relations with Pierre had not gone down to dust? Perhaps she’s taken Barthélemy to love because he is a new replacement for an old memory. Or perhaps it’s simply that he’s kind. He’s simple. He is not a heretic. Heresy is the sin she fears the most, for heresy means fire in this lifetime, her body extinguished in the heat of the fire before the soul can take its flight. All carnal sins are only one sin, and they do not carry the same sure promise of flames. 

“You’re a coward,” she whispers to herself. “Silly, cowardly old woman for whom no one cares, not in the mountains, not in the town.” 

But her life here is comfortable, she thinks. It’s a finer home than her old one in Montaillou, and there is a school her grandchildren may attend, and a fine little church on the square, stout and good and old. Heretic though she may be, Béatrice cannot help but feel comforted in the incense and the carvings there. Pierre would call it pomp, but she likes it. The Church may belong to evil, but churches like this one, she thinks, must be all for good. 

Behind her, Barthélemy stirs, and she turns to see him sitting up in bed, half naked, clearly confused. 

“Béatrice,” he says, “what are you doing?” 

“Tending the fire,” she replies, giving it another stir. “It’s getting low and the servants are asleep.” 

“Well, it’s cold. I’m cold. Come back to bed.” 

“And what if someone should see?” 

He laughs at her worries. 

“No one shall, and if they do, what can they do? You’re a widow. They’ll keep their mouths shut about a lady and priest. Or, at least, only the servants will hear of it.” 

“And then, half the town. You know what people are like.” 

They sit like that for a moment, half the room between them, everything hazy in the emberlight, and Béatrice feels a sudden stab of need for glorious summers and endless, open sky. She misses Montaillou. She misses Pierre Clergue. She misses her own fearless heresy. She misses knowing what it means to be good. She stands up, walks over to the bed. 

“I’m an old woman,” she says. “Someday soon you’ll tire of me and my decrepitude, but until then, keep me warm, and call me all the silly names you like.” 

***

Later, in the dawnlight, she watches him sleep again, and thinks of other small, dark rooms, other illicit trysts. _Someday I’ll leave you, before you leave me_ , she thinks. _I’ll go back to Montaillou. I’ll find a goodman, or Pierre, and I’ll have the consolamentum. Into the old faith I’ll die._

Maybe it will be summer when she leaves. Maybe autumn. Maybe a winter night just like this one, fading over the jagged edges of the mountain into the violent colors of a sunrise signaling a storm. But on the day she sets out and away, Béatrice’s heart will be light. She does not know what goodness is, or if she counts among the members of the good. It does not matter which of her faiths is right or wrong. It is only the familiar she craves. 

And the old faith smells of summer, and in it, she sees the blue of the skies above Montaillou. And she remembers Pierre Clergue, telling her that all sins are the same. It is that thought that keeps her up to dawn, finally, for the first time in years, truly questioning, and thus truly believing once again. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was absolutely overjoyed to see someone requesting Montaillou for Yuletide! I may have even shrieked. Anyhow, I loved your prompts, and while this isn't straightforward heretical pillow talk, I hope it scratches that itch at least somewhat. 
> 
> A quick note on history: I took a little bit of liberty with the whole 'perception of time' section in _Montaillou_ and have Béatrice thinking of a few different locations with ties to the Albigensian Crusade. One of them is Carcassonne, which was a major Cathar stronghold during the first phase of the Crusade. Another is Béziers, famous for a brutal massacre of Cathars and the possibly apocryphal phrase "kill them all. God will know his own". The final one is Montségur, the last organized stronghold of militant Cathar resistance. 
> 
> Title is from 'Returning Season' by W.S. Merwin.


End file.
